All Things Russia & Ukraine

[Typical Lax Dad]

there are only three people I can think of that benefit from the pipeline destruction:

1) the people who built it, esp if it was insured.
2) the Chinese - assuming they are just in favor of the chaos in Europe
3) the USA.

Of the three, my understanding is that the USA is unique in have the equipment required to pull it off.....

Of course we don't know. And that is probably the best answer until we have a verifiable one, but Tucker is firmly entrenched in the muckraking business - so he goes hard to the hoop with unverifiable accusations. That said, the lack of any other credible "suspects" does seem to say a lot....

Hillary and Bill

[Kismet]

Tucker claims USA committed "terrorist act" and is responsible for sabotage of pipelines. BLAME AMERICA FIRST

Neat. Just how do you get to be this big of a POS. And why aren't patriotic FoxViewers calling for Tucker's head?

It’s America’s fault.

curious who you guys think did blow up the pipeline?

Of course, no idea. Seems like it has to be a state actor, and the most likely culprit is the RU. I think the pipeline was the Czar's way of sending a message that he can wreak havoc with Western energy functionality. The Czar's immediate public blaming of the West seems on brand, and suggestive that Russian actors are likely responsible. Carlson's decision to blame the US is likewise suggestive that the Russians did this.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... ve-un-told

It makes no sense to me why Putin would throw away his only point of negotiating leverage. I just don't buy that he would misplay his hand that badly. He gains NOTHING by blowing up the pipeline. He already controlled the import end - the part where he doesn't put any gas in.... As soon as the pipes were destroyed, his ability to offer up life saving nat gas (in January when people are actually freezing to death) in exchange for European pressure for Ukrainian concessions was destroyed with it.

One of the pipes is NOT damaged. They could start flowing gas tomorrow.

IMHO your ascribing your common sense to someone who might not think the way you do. Ever think of that?
The Swedes now say their navy was monitoring Russian naval vessels in the vicinity of the explosions immediately prior to detonation - why would the Swedish navy being closely shadowing Russian ships in the Baltic in the first place?

[old salt]

What took so long for you to play the VDH card? You've apparently been channeling him again (without even giving him credit). He adores Orange Cheato just like you even as you deny it.

What's the over/under that he (and you) agree with Tucker think that USA sabotaged the Nordstream pipelines?

The Swedish navy may have the goods on the Russians

and let's not forget all those US/Ukrainian bioweapons labs that your girl Tulsi is pushing.

If you read my posts, you'll notice I mentioned that pipeline sabotage is one of the escalation cards that Putin can play.
We (& the Swedes) likely have acoustic data of any activity preceding the pipeline explosions.
I don't think VDH has opined on the pipeline saboteurs, though it's not surprising that others would, given tough guy Biden's threat to take it out.

I'd lost touch with VHD's writings since he left NR. I saw that article ref'd in an email chain of USNA buddies.
When I read it, I was struck by how much it agrees with what I've been posting, although with more political satire.
Given the date, maybe he was channeling me. Anyway, as usual, we are still very much In agreement.
I'm pleased to see he still knows how to push buttons in this forum.

[PizzaSnake]

there are only three people I can think of that benefit from the pipeline destruction:

1) the people who built it, esp if it was insured.
2) the Chinese - assuming they are just in favor of the chaos in Europe
3) the USA.

Of the three, my understanding is that the USA is unique in have the equipment required to pull it off.....

Of course we don't know. And that is probably the best answer until we have a verifiable one, but Tucker is firmly entrenched in the muckraking business - so he goes hard to the hoop with unverifiable accusations. That said, the lack of any other credible "suspects" does seem to say a lot....

"Of the three, my understanding is that the USA is unique in have the equipment required to pull it off....."

What? Unique in the ability to induce an undersea explosion?

[MDlaxfan76]

Tucker claims USA committed "terrorist act" and is responsible for sabotage of pipelines. BLAME AMERICA FIRST

Neat. Just how do you get to be this big of a POS. And why aren't patriotic FoxViewers calling for Tucker's head?

It’s America’s fault.

curious who you guys think did blow up the pipeline?

Of course, no idea. Seems like it has to be a state actor, and the most likely culprit is the RU. I think the pipeline was the Czar's way of sending a message that he can wreak havoc with Western energy functionality. The Czar's immediate public blaming of the West seems on brand, and suggestive that Russian actors are likely responsible. Carlson's decision to blame the US is likewise suggestive that the Russians did this.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... ve-un-told

It makes no sense to me why Putin would throw away his only point of negotiating leverage. I just don't buy that he would misplay his hand that badly. He gains NOTHING by blowing up the pipeline. He already controlled the import end - the part where he doesn't put any gas in.... As soon as the pipes were destroyed, his ability to offer up life saving nat gas (in January when people are actually freezing to death) in exchange for European pressure for Ukrainian concessions was destroyed with it.

More:

https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/88062

"The attack may, however, have signaling value. If so, that does change the strategic landscape in the energy war. If perpetrated by Russia, the signaling value toward the West—which would certainly know Russia is behind the explosions—may be a threat to the rest of the marine energy infrastructure. Back in 2021, Putin told a gathering of military leaders: " If our Western colleagues continue the obviously aggressive stance, we will take appropriate retaliatory military-technical measures and react harshly to unfriendly steps. I want to emphasize that we have every right to do so." Was the Nord Stream attack a hint that similar mishaps might happen to some or all of the seven major pipelines delivering Norwegian gas to the UK and continental Europe? The explosions coincided with the inauguration of the Baltic Pipe taking Norwegian gas to Poland, so this is hardly an academic hypothesis.

One irony of the attack is that Russia’s Gazprom potentially stands to benefit: it will no longer need to invent excuses not to supply Europe via Nord Stream 1. Now it can claim a force majeure, which will dramatically reduce the risk of compensation claims for non-delivered volumes. This logic, however, does not explain the damage caused to Nord Stream 2. On the other hand, the Nord Stream consortium companies and eventually Gazprom might even hope to collect some insurance for the damaged pipelines. Given that they already looked set to become a stranded asset, that would be far from the worst outcome for the giant company.

The elimination of Nord Stream’s gas supply capacity from the European energy equation also strengthens the Ukrainian hand. Ukraine’s fear ever since 2014 has been that if forced to choose between Russian gas and support for Ukraine, Europe might choose the former and abandon Ukraine, and as long as non-Ukrainian supply routes existed, Ukraine would not be able to stop Russia from supplying Europe. This was one of the reasons why Ukraine opposed the construction of Nord Stream 2.

The explosions have removed some optionality and thus changed the state of the board for some players. Russia has lost the opportunity to offer an easy restoration of gas supplies to Europe in exchange for concessions from the West. For the Europeans, there is no longer the risk that binding contracts to buy more expensive gas will become loss-making if Russia suddenly floods the market with cheap gas following some sort of de-escalation.

In theory, Russia still has the physical capacity to increase gas supplies to Europe. It could accomplish that by relying on another non-commissioned line of Nord Stream 2 that was spared the explosion (though there are reports that this last line might also have been damaged after all), or the Yamal-Europe pipeline. Together they have a capacity of 60 billion cubic meters per annum, or 40 percent of the pre-war supply volumes. However, with the Yamal-Europe pipeline controlled by Poland, a resolute ally of Ukraine, and Nord Stream 2 having yet to be launched, pulling any of this off would be a lot more difficult than simply switching back on the turbines on Nord Stream 1."

Makes sense.
Answers HooDat's question well.

Could it have been some other country or independent actor?
Sure, but the notion that the USA would benefit is nonsense.
We want global energy prices to go down too...but not at the cost of supporting Russia versus Ukraine.
Same as Europe.

If/when Putin is out of power, and there's been full accountability, there will be an opportunity for significantly renewed trade with Russia, but there's no chance of a return to over reliance on Russian energy. That's done and dusted.

But there can be some, and there are still lots of ways that can happen, with or without those particular pipelines.
But that's post-Putin.

[Carroll81]

there are only three people I can think of that benefit from the pipeline destruction:

1) the people who built it, esp if it was insured.
2) the Chinese - assuming they are just in favor of the chaos in Europe
3) the USA.

Of the three, my understanding is that the USA is unique in have the equipment required to pull it off.....

Of course we don't know. And that is probably the best answer until we have a verifiable one, but Tucker is firmly entrenched in the muckraking business - so he goes hard to the hoop with unverifiable accusations. That said, the lack of any other credible "suspects" does seem to say a lot....

4) an extreme eco-terrorist group can't be ruled out yet can it, though they tend to claim their actions?

[Farfromgeneva]

Tucker claims USA committed "terrorist act" and is responsible for sabotage of pipelines. BLAME AMERICA FIRST

Neat. Just how do you get to be this big of a POS. And why aren't patriotic FoxViewers calling for Tucker's head?

It’s America’s fault.

curious who you guys think did blow up the pipeline?

Hillary.

Did she throw in with George Soros on those space lasers because I assumed that was the answer.

[Farfromgeneva]

-citing pulled Federal permits and the Dems for the reason there's a natural gas shortage, instead of market forces, and the unavailability of labor to run a fracking site (and owners unwilling to takes unneeded risk to open more wells).

just thought I would point out that the main reason the oil & gas industry is reluctant to take unneeded risk on drilling and re-completions is due to a combination of the obvious political headwinds against oil & gas combined with the dramatic number of pensions, endowments and other large institutional investors who have pledged to not invest in the hydrocarbon industry.

Companies like Shell, Exxon and BP are redirecting the cash flow from their oil and gas production to invest in renewable energy and carbon sequestration projects. Smaller firms have a dearth of capital - their investors want the distributions.

Wonder if Ralph Kinder regrets taking his MLP private.

[Farfromgeneva]

there are only three people I can think of that benefit from the pipeline destruction:

1) the people who built it, esp if it was insured.
2) the Chinese - assuming they are just in favor of the chaos in Europe
3) the USA.

Of the three, my understanding is that the USA is unique in have the equipment required to pull it off.....

Of course we don't know. And that is probably the best answer until we have a verifiable one, but Tucker is firmly entrenched in the muckraking business - so he goes hard to the hoop with unverifiable accusations. That said, the lack of any other credible "suspects" does seem to say a lot....

4) an extreme eco-terrorist group can't be ruled out yet can it, though they tend to claim their actions?

I mean in theory DocBarrister can’t be ruled out given the way he wants to drive mandates through to go to Wind everywhere tomorrow. But that doesn’t mean it’s worth actually contemplating and discussing for more than one nanosecond that scenario given the incredibly low probability.

[DocBarrister]

there are only three people I can think of that benefit from the pipeline destruction:

1) the people who built it, esp if it was insured.
2) the Chinese - assuming they are just in favor of the chaos in Europe
3) the USA.

Of the three, my understanding is that the USA is unique in have the equipment required to pull it off.....

Of course we don't know. And that is probably the best answer until we have a verifiable one, but Tucker is firmly entrenched in the muckraking business - so he goes hard to the hoop with unverifiable accusations. That said, the lack of any other credible "suspects" does seem to say a lot....

4) an extreme eco-terrorist group can't be ruled out yet can it, though they tend to claim their actions?

I mean in theory DocBarrister can’t be ruled out given the way he wants to drive mandates through to go to Wind everywhere tomorrow. But that doesn’t mean it’s worth actually contemplating and discussing for more than one nanosecond that scenario given the incredibly low probability.

There is no eco-terrorist group (or any terrorist group of any kind) in the world with the capability of executing such sabotage.

This was done by a state actor, and all signs point to Russia.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... -response/

DocBarrister

[old salt]

All the greatest hits are here:

-blaming folks other than Putin for Putin's invasion

Citing factors & decisions which enabled Putin to do what he vowed to do is not blaming others.
NATO expansion & EU energy policy were conscious decisions which did not adequately consider the long term Russian reaction & the unintended consequences which have followed.

Now that I've discovered where VDH has been publishing, it's interesting to walk backwards through what he's been saying about this war.
VDH is, after all, a highly regarded military historian who included political & cultural factors in his history of wars. He was praised by the likes of Sir John Keegan. He was also a visiting fellow at USNA for a semester. All before he began commenting on contemporary politics & culture.
He's hardly a Putin fan or apologist. Much of this could have been written by DocB.
https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/14/ukra ... or-a-bang/

[Typical Lax Dad]

[MDlaxfan76]

All the greatest hits are here:

-blaming folks other than Putin for Putin's invasion

Citing factors & decisions which enabled Putin to do what he vowed to do is not blaming others.
NATO expansion & EU energy policy were conscious decisions which did not adequately consider the long term Russian reaction & the unintended consequences which have followed.

Now that I've discovered where VDH has been publishing, it's interesting to walk backwards through what he's been saying about this war.
VDH is, after all, a highly regarded military historian who included political & cultural factors in his history of wars. He was praised by the likes of Sir John Keegan. He was also a visiting fellow at USNA for a semester. All before he began commenting on contemporary politics & culture.
He's hardly a Putin fan or apologist. Much of this could have been written by DocB.
https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/14/ukra ... or-a-bang/

He's NOT highly regarded other than in right wing circles.
He's lost all credibility.

[a fan]

Now that I've discovered where VDH has been publishing, it's interesting to walk backwards through what he's been saying about this war.
VDH is, after all, a highly regarded military historian who included political & cultural factors in his history of wars. He was praised by the likes of Sir John Keegan. He was also a visiting fellow at USNA for a semester. All before he began commenting on contemporary politics & culture.
He's hardly a Putin fan or apologist. Much of this could have been written by DocB.
https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/14/ukra ... or-a-bang/

You're pretending that you didn't notice that this piece is ENTIRELY different in tone and content from the last piece you cited?

No mention of Biden. No mention of "A once haughty and sanctimonious green Europe". No mention of "the left".

Totally different work, and still managed to give an assessment of the situation. A Xmas miracle!!

It's as if I've been right to criticize his nonsensical partisan horse hockey all these years, preferring that he (horrors) simply call balls and strikes.

How about that?

[a fan]

there are only three people I can think of that benefit from the pipeline destruction:

1) the people who built it, esp if it was insured.
2) the Chinese - assuming they are just in favor of the chaos in Europe
3) the USA.

Of the three, my understanding is that the USA is unique in have the equipment required to pull it off.....

Of course we don't know. And that is probably the best answer until we have a verifiable one, but Tucker is firmly entrenched in the muckraking business - so he goes hard to the hoop with unverifiable accusations. That said, the lack of any other credible "suspects" does seem to say a lot....

4) an extreme eco-terrorist group can't be ruled out yet can it, though they tend to claim their actions?

If we're going to speculate, I think it has to be someone who ASSUMES the likelihood that they will get caught is pretty high. Satellites.

Or? They're idiots. So sure, eco terrorists. Makes as much sense as other choices.

[old salt]

All the greatest hits are here:

-blaming folks other than Putin for Putin's invasion

Citing factors & decisions which enabled Putin to do what he vowed to do is not blaming others.
NATO expansion & EU energy policy were conscious decisions which did not adequately consider the long term Russian reaction & the unintended consequences which have followed.

Now that I've discovered where VDH has been publishing, it's interesting to walk backwards through what he's been saying about this war.
VDH is, after all, a highly regarded military historian who included political & cultural factors in his history of wars. He was praised by the likes of Sir John Keegan. He was also a visiting fellow at USNA for a semester. All before he began commenting on contemporary politics & culture.
He's hardly a Putin fan or apologist. Much of this could have been written by DocB.
https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/14/ukra ... or-a-bang/

He's NOT highly regarded other than in right wing circles.
He's lost all credibility.

He's highly regarded as a military historian. Starting before he became a political commentator.
He lost credibility with you when you stopped being a Republican.
I'll take Sir John Keegan's & VP Cheney's opinion over yours.
https://www.medievalists.net/2016/11/bl ... e-culture/
In 2001, Victor Davis Hanson, a historian who, according to John Keegan, “is becoming one of the best-known historians in America,” published the controversial book Carnage and Culture. Its central argument is that a definitive “western way of war” can be traced through history, from the Persian Wars of the fifth century B.C. to the modern day.
Keegan wrote the introduction to some of Hanson's military history books.

A NYT book review : https://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/28/book ... to-it.html
War Is Hell. Get Used to It.
By Barry Gewen, Sept. 28, 2003

THE military historian and classicist Victor Davis Hanson is one of the favorite intellectuals of the Bush White House. He has met with the president and addressed the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Dick Cheney has told aides that Hanson's book ''An Autumn of War'' reflects his own philosophy. It's easy to see why. ''An Autumn of War,'' a collection of pieces written in the months following 9/11, primarily for National Review Online and for conservative publications like City Journal, is a volume that breathes fire and outrage. It calls for ''resolute action and victory'' against terrorism, while waxing indignant over the nation's ''cultural elite,'' people who, Hanson declares, ''as a general rule lead lives rather different from those of most Americans.''

Hanson is a fierce, uncompromising polemicist, yet if that were all he was, he would scarcely stand out in the crowd of partisans who can see little right in the Clinton administration and little wrong in the Bush administration. But what he brings to the public discussion -- along with an unusually vigorous prose style and a remarkable erudition -- is a philosophy of war not meant for the weak-kneed or fainthearted. Hanson does not celebrate war, but he accepts it as a fact of life, a part of the human condition that no amount of idealistic preaching or good intentions can will away. We are doomed to conflict and bloodletting. The British scholar John Keegan has written that the great military historian of the 19th century is the Prussian Hans Delbrück, but that Delbrück never achieved popularity in the English-speaking world in part because his hard-nosed (one is tempted to say Germanic) acknowledgment of military necessity in the affairs of men did not sit comfortably with optimistic, progressive-minded English and American readers, who liked their historians to explain why warfare was becoming obsolete. Hanson is in the Delbrück tradition, though the seminal influence on his thinking, as he unhesitatingly tells us, is the father of realpolitik, Thucydides.

Hanson's military studies are impressively wide-ranging, but often frustrating. He has said that generalization ''is indispensable in the writing of history,'' yet those who don't appreciate the past delivered in broad strokes won't be convinced. Islam and the West, Hanson announces, are ''two entirely antithetical cultures,'' despite a busload of experts who would say otherwise. He writes of the bombing of Tokyo during World War II that ''incinerating thousands of Japanese civilians on March 11, 1945, is seen by Westerners as not nearly so gruesome an act as beheading . . . parachuting B-29 fliers.'' Well, it depends on which Westerners you talk to. And how would a reader even begin to sort out the truth of a statement like ''The West, ancient and modern, placed far fewer religious, cultural and political impediments to natural inquiry, capital formation and individual expression than did other societies''? Too often, one feels that Hanson isn't so much learning from the past as using it to validate the views he started out with. On the other hand, when he sticks to the facts and doesn't treat history as an occasion for sermonizing, his scholarship can be both rewarding and pleasurable. His portrait of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman in ''The Soul of Battle'' is a tour de force, successfully explaining Sherman's special genius and offering a persuasive argument for the morality of his cruel, terroristic march through the South.

Like so much of Hanson's work, ''Ripples of Battle'' has its good and bad sides. Its thesis is that battles have broad, frequently surprising repercussions on the societies that fight them -- an argument so bland and unexceptionable that it's hard to stifle a yawn just stating it. But this is a grab bag of a book, and its real value lies in the freedom it gives Hanson to roam far and wide, pursuing the subjects that interest him. He focuses on three battles -- Okinawa during World War II, Shiloh during the American Civil War and Delium during the Peloponnesian War. Within the three chapters on these conflicts Hanson explores such topics as suicide bombers, Ernie Pyle, popular fiction, the origins of the Ku Klux Klan, the dramas of Euripides, pre-emptive warfare and Theban statuary. No reader will give his undivided attention to every page. But there is something here for practically everyone.

The most powerful section is the first one, which describes the fighting on Okinawa and explains how it led, almost inevitably, to the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese on Okinawa, Hanson says, knew that they couldn't win; their aim was simply to kill as many Americans as possible, to demonstrate how costly an invasion of the mainland would be. Over 12,000 Americans died in the three months of fighting, with another 33,000 wounded or missing. The Japanese losses were even more horrific, and when civilian casualties are counted in, the total number of killed or wounded on Okinawa amounted to almost a quarter of a million people. There were 110,000 Japanese troops on the island; for the defense of the mainland, 2,350,000 soldiers were available, along with a civilian militia that Tokyo claimed could reach 30 million. The two atomic bombs, Hanson argues, actually saved lives, Japanese as well as American. His is not the last word on the subject: he does not discuss the possibility of Washington's accepting something less than unconditional surrender or of giving the Japanese a demonstration of the fearsome new weapon. But Hanson's conclusion is unassailable: ''The reasons for Hiroshima . . . are inexplicable without remembrance of Okinawa.''

The larkiest part of ''Ripples of Battle'' plays with a counterfactual proposition. Socrates fought bravely at Delium, an Athenian defeat. What if he had been killed? Here Hanson is having fun. Socrates had not yet become the mature philosopher we know from Plato and Xenophon. Indeed, the most important portrait of him that existed at the time was Aristophanes' mean-spirited attack in ''The Clouds.'' Hanson writes that ''a dead Socrates at Delium might mean today there would not be a book in any library or bookstore on Socrates. Plato himself might be as little known to the general reader as a Zeno or Epicurus.''

In his introduction and epilogue, Hanson speaks of the 9/11 attack, which he treats as another ''battle.'' It's an imperfect use of the word, but it allows him to take up themes that run through his other books. One of these is the irresponsibility of the country's ''elite,'' elsewhere called the ''influential'' and the ''sophisticated,'' also the ''leisured class'' (there are times when Hanson gives the impression that the professors, editors and lawyers he disapproves of don't really work, that only physical labor is truly productive and virtuous). The subject elicits some of his most laughable generalizations: ''The American intelligentsia has always wished foremost to be liked, envied and courted.'' In this book, he also sets his sights on the ''clever but empty games'' of the modern visual arts. Hanson has never given any indication that he cares about contemporary art, or even cares to experience it for himself. He knows what he doesn't like, and he is confident that most of his countrymen don't like it either. Such populist bullying is unbecoming in someone so learned.

Finally, Hanson returns to his most profound theme, the necessity of war. After a long slumber, the country awakened on 9/11 to the age-old truth that blood must sometimes be shed. Peace, not war, is the historical aberration. Hanson is more unflinching than most writers -- it's this that gets him inside the White House. He understands that the present administration (or any administration) is in a race against time to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, and other weapons of mass destruction, before they end up in the hands of terrorists; he understands, too, that military threats or action may prove at least as crucial as diplomacy in achieving this goal. The objection that can be raised against him is not that he is too bellicose -- his straight talking has a refreshing clarity -- but that he offers no end to our predicament. If warfare is mankind's natural and unchanging condition, then proliferation is inevitable, and just as inevitably we will someday face terrorists capable of blowing up Washington or New York (or Dallas or Indianapolis). The alternative is to accept the need for military action in the short run while pursuing some kind of W.M.D. moratorium in the long run, whether through a world government, a confederation of nations, a consortium of great powers or an American imperium. For, contrary to Hanson, if we cannot somehow work toward an end to warfare, breaking with history's nightmare, then it is a certainty that our current age of globalization must eventually give way to an age of apocalypse.

Interesting to consider where history has brought us in the nearly 2 decades since that review was written.

[old salt]

Now that I've discovered where VDH has been publishing, it's interesting to walk backwards through what he's been saying about this war.
VDH is, after all, a highly regarded military historian who included political & cultural factors in his history of wars. He was praised by the likes of Sir John Keegan. He was also a visiting fellow at USNA for a semester. All before he began commenting on contemporary politics & culture.
He's hardly a Putin fan or apologist. Much of this could have been written by DocB.
https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/14/ukra ... or-a-bang/

You're pretending that you didn't notice that this piece is ENTIRELY different in tone and content from the last piece you cited?

No mention of Biden. No mention of "A once haughty and sanctimonious green Europe". No mention of "the left".

Totally different work, and still managed to give an assessment of the situation. A Xmas miracle!!

It's as if I've been right to criticize his nonsensical partisan horse hockey all these years, preferring that he (horrors) simply call balls and strikes.

How about that?

It's totally consistent on the subject -- the war in Ukraine.

He just doesn't lapse into domestic partisan politics in the second piece, which is apparently the only thing you read for.

[Seacoaster(1)]

Assessment:

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgr ... -october-4

"Ukrainian forces continued to make significant gains in Kherson Oblast while simultaneously continuing advances in Kharkiv and Luhansk oblasts on October 4. Ukrainian forces liberated several settlements on the eastern bank of the Inhulets River along the T2207 highway, forcing Russian forces to retreat to the south toward Kherson City. Ukrainian forces also continued to push south along the Dnipro River and the T0403 highway, severing two Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) in northern Kherson Oblast and forcing Russians south of the Kherson-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border toward the Beryslav area. Ukrainian military officials noted that the Ukrainian interdiction campaign is crippling Russian attempts to transfer additional ammunition, reserves, mobilized men, and means of defense to frontline positions.[1] Ukrainian forces also continued to advance east of the Oskil River in Kharkiv Oblast, and Russian sources claimed that battles are ongoing near the R66 Svatove-Kreminna highway.[2]

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement of partial mobilization is having more significant short-term impacts on the Russian domestic context than on the war in Ukraine, interacting with Russian battlefield failures to exacerbate fractures in the information space that confuse and undermine Putin’s narratives. Ukrainian sources have rightly observed that the partial mobilization is not a major threat in the short term because the Ukrainian counteroffensive is moving faster than the mobilization can generate effects.[3] Ukrainian Intelligence Chief Kyrylo Budanov even stated that mobilization in Russia is a “gift” to Ukraine because the Kremlin is finding itself in a “dead end,” caught between its failures and its determination to hold what it has seized.[4] The controversies surrounding the poorly executed partial mobilization, coupled with significant Russian defeats in Kharkiv Oblast and around Lyman, have intensified infighting between pro-Putin Russian nationalist factions and are creating new fractures among voices who speak to Putin’s core constituencies.[5]

Putin is visibly failing at balancing the competing demands of the Russian nationalists who have become increasingly combative since mobilization began despite sharing Putin’s general war aims and goals in Ukraine. ISW has identified three main factions in the current Russian nationalist information space: Russian milbloggers and war correspondents, former Russian or proxy officers and veterans, and some of the Russian siloviki—people with meaningful power bases and forces of their own. Putin needs to retain the support of all three of these factions. Milbloggers present Putin’s vision to a pro-war audience in both Russia and the proxy republics. The veteran community is helping organize and support force generation campaigns.[6] The siloviki are providing combat power on the battlefield. Putin needs all three factions to sustain his war effort, but the failures in Ukraine combined with the chaotic partial mobilization are seemingly disrupting the radical nationalist community in Russia. Putin is currently trying to appease this community by featuring some milbloggers on state-owned television, allowing siloviki to generate their own forces and continue offensive operations around Bakhmut and Donetsk City, and placating veterans by ordering mobilization and engaging the general public in the war effort as they have long demanded.

Russian failures around Lyman galvanized strong and direct criticism of the commander of the Central Military District (CMD), Alexander Lapin, who supposedly commanded the Lyman grouping, as ISW has previously reported.[7] This criticism originated from the siloviki group, spearheaded by Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov and Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin. Kadyrov and Prigozhin represent an emerging voice within the regime’s fighting forces that is attacking the more traditional and conventional approach to the war pursued by Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoigu and the uniformed military command. The chaotic execution of Putin’s mobilization order followed by the collapse of the Lyman pocket ignited tensions between the more vocal and radical Kadyrov-Prigozhin camp, who attacked the MoD and the uniformed military for their poor handling of the war.[8] Putin now finds himself in a dilemma. He cannot risk alienating the Kadyrov-Prigozhin camp, as he desperately needs Kadyrov’s Chechen forces and Prigozhin’s Wagner Group mercenaries to fight in Ukraine.[9] Nor can he disenfranchise the MoD establishment, which provides the overwhelming majority of Russian military power in Ukraine and the institutional underpinnings needed to carry out the mobilization order and continue the war."

Sorry, this assessment doesn't blame Biden for everything.

[MDlaxfan76]

All the greatest hits are here:

-blaming folks other than Putin for Putin's invasion

Citing factors & decisions which enabled Putin to do what he vowed to do is not blaming others.
NATO expansion & EU energy policy were conscious decisions which did not adequately consider the long term Russian reaction & the unintended consequences which have followed.

Now that I've discovered where VDH has been publishing, it's interesting to walk backwards through what he's been saying about this war.
VDH is, after all, a highly regarded military historian who included political & cultural factors in his history of wars. He was praised by the likes of Sir John Keegan. He was also a visiting fellow at USNA for a semester. All before he began commenting on contemporary politics & culture.
He's hardly a Putin fan or apologist. Much of this could have been written by DocB.
https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/14/ukra ... or-a-bang/

He's NOT highly regarded other than in right wing circles.
He's lost all credibility.

He's highly regarded as a military historian. Starting before he became a political commentator.
He lost credibility with you when you stopped being a Republican.
I'll take Sir John Keegan's & VP Cheney's opinion over yours.
https://www.medievalists.net/2016/11/bl ... e-culture/
In 2001, Victor Davis Hanson, a historian who, according to John Keegan, “is becoming one of the best-known historians in America,” published the controversial book Carnage and Culture. Its central argument is that a definitive “western way of war” can be traced through history, from the Persian Wars of the fifth century B.C. to the modern day.
Keegan wrote the introduction to some of Hanson's military history books.

A NYT book review : https://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/28/book ... to-it.html
War Is Hell. Get Used to It.
By Barry Gewen, Sept. 28, 2003

THE military historian and classicist Victor Davis Hanson is one of the favorite intellectuals of the Bush White House. He has met with the president and addressed the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Dick Cheney has told aides that Hanson's book ''An Autumn of War'' reflects his own philosophy. It's easy to see why. ''An Autumn of War,'' a collection of pieces written in the months following 9/11, primarily for National Review Online and for conservative publications like City Journal, is a volume that breathes fire and outrage. It calls for ''resolute action and victory'' against terrorism, while waxing indignant over the nation's ''cultural elite,'' people who, Hanson declares, ''as a general rule lead lives rather different from those of most Americans.''

Hanson is a fierce, uncompromising polemicist, yet if that were all he was, he would scarcely stand out in the crowd of partisans who can see little right in the Clinton administration and little wrong in the Bush administration. But what he brings to the public discussion -- along with an unusually vigorous prose style and a remarkable erudition -- is a philosophy of war not meant for the weak-kneed or fainthearted. Hanson does not celebrate war, but he accepts it as a fact of life, a part of the human condition that no amount of idealistic preaching or good intentions can will away. We are doomed to conflict and bloodletting. The British scholar John Keegan has written that the great military historian of the 19th century is the Prussian Hans Delbrück, but that Delbrück never achieved popularity in the English-speaking world in part because his hard-nosed (one is tempted to say Germanic) acknowledgment of military necessity in the affairs of men did not sit comfortably with optimistic, progressive-minded English and American readers, who liked their historians to explain why warfare was becoming obsolete. Hanson is in the Delbrück tradition, though the seminal influence on his thinking, as he unhesitatingly tells us, is the father of realpolitik, Thucydides.

Hanson's military studies are impressively wide-ranging, but often frustrating. He has said that generalization ''is indispensable in the writing of history,'' yet those who don't appreciate the past delivered in broad strokes won't be convinced. Islam and the West, Hanson announces, are ''two entirely antithetical cultures,'' despite a busload of experts who would say otherwise. He writes of the bombing of Tokyo during World War II that ''incinerating thousands of Japanese civilians on March 11, 1945, is seen by Westerners as not nearly so gruesome an act as beheading . . . parachuting B-29 fliers.'' Well, it depends on which Westerners you talk to. And how would a reader even begin to sort out the truth of a statement like ''The West, ancient and modern, placed far fewer religious, cultural and political impediments to natural inquiry, capital formation and individual expression than did other societies''? Too often, one feels that Hanson isn't so much learning from the past as using it to validate the views he started out with. On the other hand, when he sticks to the facts and doesn't treat history as an occasion for sermonizing, his scholarship can be both rewarding and pleasurable. His portrait of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman in ''The Soul of Battle'' is a tour de force, successfully explaining Sherman's special genius and offering a persuasive argument for the morality of his cruel, terroristic march through the South.

Like so much of Hanson's work, ''Ripples of Battle'' has its good and bad sides. Its thesis is that battles have broad, frequently surprising repercussions on the societies that fight them -- an argument so bland and unexceptionable that it's hard to stifle a yawn just stating it. But this is a grab bag of a book, and its real value lies in the freedom it gives Hanson to roam far and wide, pursuing the subjects that interest him. He focuses on three battles -- Okinawa during World War II, Shiloh during the American Civil War and Delium during the Peloponnesian War. Within the three chapters on these conflicts Hanson explores such topics as suicide bombers, Ernie Pyle, popular fiction, the origins of the Ku Klux Klan, the dramas of Euripides, pre-emptive warfare and Theban statuary. No reader will give his undivided attention to every page. But there is something here for practically everyone.

The most powerful section is the first one, which describes the fighting on Okinawa and explains how it led, almost inevitably, to the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese on Okinawa, Hanson says, knew that they couldn't win; their aim was simply to kill as many Americans as possible, to demonstrate how costly an invasion of the mainland would be. Over 12,000 Americans died in the three months of fighting, with another 33,000 wounded or missing. The Japanese losses were even more horrific, and when civilian casualties are counted in, the total number of killed or wounded on Okinawa amounted to almost a quarter of a million people. There were 110,000 Japanese troops on the island; for the defense of the mainland, 2,350,000 soldiers were available, along with a civilian militia that Tokyo claimed could reach 30 million. The two atomic bombs, Hanson argues, actually saved lives, Japanese as well as American. His is not the last word on the subject: he does not discuss the possibility of Washington's accepting something less than unconditional surrender or of giving the Japanese a demonstration of the fearsome new weapon. But Hanson's conclusion is unassailable: ''The reasons for Hiroshima . . . are inexplicable without remembrance of Okinawa.''

The larkiest part of ''Ripples of Battle'' plays with a counterfactual proposition. Socrates fought bravely at Delium, an Athenian defeat. What if he had been killed? Here Hanson is having fun. Socrates had not yet become the mature philosopher we know from Plato and Xenophon. Indeed, the most important portrait of him that existed at the time was Aristophanes' mean-spirited attack in ''The Clouds.'' Hanson writes that ''a dead Socrates at Delium might mean today there would not be a book in any library or bookstore on Socrates. Plato himself might be as little known to the general reader as a Zeno or Epicurus.''

In his introduction and epilogue, Hanson speaks of the 9/11 attack, which he treats as another ''battle.'' It's an imperfect use of the word, but it allows him to take up themes that run through his other books. One of these is the irresponsibility of the country's ''elite,'' elsewhere called the ''influential'' and the ''sophisticated,'' also the ''leisured class'' (there are times when Hanson gives the impression that the professors, editors and lawyers he disapproves of don't really work, that only physical labor is truly productive and virtuous). The subject elicits some of his most laughable generalizations: ''The American intelligentsia has always wished foremost to be liked, envied and courted.'' In this book, he also sets his sights on the ''clever but empty games'' of the modern visual arts. Hanson has never given any indication that he cares about contemporary art, or even cares to experience it for himself. He knows what he doesn't like, and he is confident that most of his countrymen don't like it either. Such populist bullying is unbecoming in someone so learned.

Finally, Hanson returns to his most profound theme, the necessity of war. After a long slumber, the country awakened on 9/11 to the age-old truth that blood must sometimes be shed. Peace, not war, is the historical aberration. Hanson is more unflinching than most writers -- it's this that gets him inside the White House. He understands that the present administration (or any administration) is in a race against time to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, and other weapons of mass destruction, before they end up in the hands of terrorists; he understands, too, that military threats or action may prove at least as crucial as diplomacy in achieving this goal. The objection that can be raised against him is not that he is too bellicose -- his straight talking has a refreshing clarity -- but that he offers no end to our predicament. If warfare is mankind's natural and unchanging condition, then proliferation is inevitable, and just as inevitably we will someday face terrorists capable of blowing up Washington or New York (or Dallas or Indianapolis). The alternative is to accept the need for military action in the short run while pursuing some kind of W.M.D. moratorium in the long run, whether through a world government, a confederation of nations, a consortium of great powers or an American imperium. For, contrary to Hanson, if we cannot somehow work toward an end to warfare, breaking with history's nightmare, then it is a certainty that our current age of globalization must eventually give way to an age of apocalypse.

Interesting to consider where history has brought us in the nearly 2 decades since that review was written.

He once was highly regarded as a military historian (though almost entirely on the right), but he became a right wing partisan shill, smarmily providing a pseudo intellectual veneer to the stupidity spewed on right wing media in return for money and ego strokes.

I don't know about you but I was never a right wing partisan nor a GOP partisan for that matter, though I nearly always voted Republican.

[Kismet]

As historians, I'll take Stephen Ambrose and David McCullough any day of the week.